When she feels the tension rising, Lucile isolates herself in her room.
A room that she has redecorated in recent months to her liking, in pink.
“A little girly, with astrological signs,” she describes.
This room is his den, his fallback solution.
“It's the only place where I feel good when I know I'm going to get angry,” confides the master's student in intercultural relations at the University of Lille.
At 22, like hundreds of young people her age, the young woman returned to live with her parents a year ago.
According to the survey by the Observatory for Student Life (OVE), the Covid-19 epidemic has changed the way students are housed.
44% say they moved at the start of the housing health crisis they usually occupied.
Among them, most wanted "to be closer to their family", notes the study.
"Many young people have left with their families to compensate for loneliness, to leave deplorable housing conditions or both at the same time", underlines Joanie Cayouette-Remblière, sociologist at INED (National Institute for Demographic Studies).
However.
At the third confinement, this provisional ended up dragging on and 34% of these young people report that “relationship difficulties” have emerged.
Many parent-child tensions
For Lucile, who was surprised by the Covid at the start of 2020 in the middle of a sabbatical year in Spain, the family return to Givenchy-lès-la-Bassée, in Pas-de-Calais, was brutal.
“When I got home, I was living on Spanish time, I ate lunch at 3 pm.
My parents did not understand.
They said:
We are not at the hotel here
”.
Since then, she "gets confused a lot" with her mother, she regrets.
“For her as for us, the period was a bit complicated, admits her mother Sandrine, a nursing assistant.
I tried not to impose too many rules on her, but she had changed a lot in Spain!
I sometimes lacked diplomacy.
"
Tensions between parents and children returned to the fold have been legion in recent months.
“A third of my students returned to their parents, often for financial reasons, reports Gladys Mondière, psychologist and professor at the University of Lille-3.
Some young people find themselves cut off from everything, in rural areas, with connection problems.
“In his psychiatric clinic, these young adults have poured out their feelings, most of them claiming to be suffering from this situation.
“One of my patients told me that her mother threw in her face when she came back:
Erase yourself!
It's very violent, as an expression, ”reports the psychologist.
"In the evening, it feels weird"
For Lila
(the first name has been changed)
, a psychology student in Lille, it is the evenings that are sometimes lived out of sync.
“In the evening, it feels weird.
When you're a student, you see people, you go out.
My parents eat at 7 p.m. and after that they play Scrabble.
Me, I continue to watch my Netflix series on my computer.
Those evenings, I feel very different from them, ”admits the 23-year-old, the youngest of seven siblings.
Lila lost her student job in March 2020 and had to leave her tiny apartment last summer.
For his mother too, the return of this "youngest" changed the game.
“You have to cook again for three people, schedule meal times, share the bathroom, that's community life, you have to adapt!
»Admits, lip service, Adeline, 69, while admitting also appreciating the return of shared family moments.
"We go to the market together, we go shopping, new relationships are being created", rejoices the mother.
Still according to the OVE survey, it is women, in the majority, who have reported tensions with their parents.
"My parents are like friends"
Sylvain
(the first name has been changed)
, 34, did not experience the period as a priesthood, quite the contrary.
“My parents are like friends.
I am the youngest and I know it will look like an easy caricature, but I have always had excellent relations with them, ”assures this employee in IT.
Tenant of a two-room apartment in Paris (18th century), Sylvain packed up as soon as he saw, in March 2020, “Emmanuel Macron on TV”.
“I didn't feel like I was staying within my four walls in Paris”.
The young Parisian has even gone so far as to ask his boss to switch to 100% telework in recent months in order to be able to work more easily from the large family house in Yvelines.
“He arrived with his suitcase one fine morning.
I was delighted, remembers Françoise, her mother.
Sylvain is not at all a burden, he tinkers a lot, he is interested in everything, we talk about a whole bunch of subjects all the time.
He even took advantage of the period to set up a room on the ground floor for his father, who is very ill.
If the first few weeks were delicate, it is more for health reasons than relational.
“I am a mother hen, I have always kissed my son.
There, it's been a year since I hugged him, ”laments Françoise.
"When he is going to leave, it will give me a pinch"
Then summer arrived.
The large garden, the swimming pool were pleasant for everyone.
“His girlfriend joined him.
She was working outside and he, the poor thing, was getting sunburnt, ”says the mother who is almost apprehensive about returning to normal life.
Because the days of this family bubble are numbered, she knows it well.
"When he's going to have to leave, I think about it often, it's going to make me a pinch," she admits.
Sylvain got so comfortable in the family home that he put his Parisian apartment up for rent on Airbnb.
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In the North, Lucile, she will go back to Spain for an internship at the end of the academic year.
She feels relieved: “Being far from each other will improve our relationships”.
Her mother nods, “I already know I will miss her.
When I accompany him to the airport, I will shed my little tear, as usual.
"